


Dichotomy

by LyricalKris



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Romance, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:14:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26374045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricalKris/pseuds/LyricalKris
Summary: Edward left Forks to save Bella's life, but fate is nothing if not a bitter harpy. The once innocent child has become the red-eyed monster she'd once threatened to make him. But even without her sweet blood to tempt him, she may yet be his undoing.Twilight AU - collab with btwn LyricalKris and Mariescullen!
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Bella Swan
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Many thanks to –**

**Pre-readers: Packy and FlamingMaple**

**Beta: Songster**

**Banner: Mina**  
________________________________________

**_~Edward~_ **

I lay back taking in the clear night. Bursts of color danced in the center of the sky, flourishing as they moved. Time seemed to blur together since I’d arrived a mere eight weeks ago.

I’d been patient with my ire, relishing in the fact that this was the plausible choice.

The only choice.

For the time being, it was easier for me to be gone. For the time being.

Alice was keeping a watchful eye on me, I’m sure. But also, on the girl with deep brown eyes.

The new girl.

The girl who ran me out of Forks.

It was a fair trade—two years tops Carlisle said—of my life. Two years tops for the rest of hers.

I couldn’t risk everything my father and creator had worked for so long to hold. The Swan girl was an innocent. I’d made my peace with that. She wasn’t a demon come to haunt me. It was my decision that drove me from my home and my decision that kept the roof over the life Carlisle had created for us. The scent from that day still shadowed me, following me like a pesky rain cloud no matter where I went. Was I still the same Edward, as I had been in the classroom? Part of me said yes while the other half said no. Tanya told me not to judge myself; I’d done what it took to keep the girl safe, to keep the secret. It was essential for survival: the blood lust was a burden we all carried with us. Neither she nor anyone in our ‘extended family’s’ clan had ever faced something of the sort. The only basis I had for comparison with was Emmett. And my burly brother dismissed both cases with a sigh and wave of the hand. He didn’t quite get why I’d had to leave.

It was nice being away, a break from the sleepy town in which we permanently resided. I missed my family though. My siblings and my parents were one of the things that brought me joy in this life. And while it was easier to be around them in a sense, I didn’t have to deal with three very complete, very in love couples. Their love for one another, their constant need for their companions, and that need being met by merely crossing a room often became a headache for someone who could hear their every thought. It didn’t help that I’d been alone for the better half of the last century.

I often wondered if I’d ever find anyone.

Someone like Esme was to Carlisle or Jasper to Alice.

Thoughts of Tanya, the head of the Denali house, crossed my mind. I’d known them for a great deal of my time as a vampire, our fellow vegetarian coven from the great north west. They’d maintained a permanent residence in the snowy hills of Denali, Alaska. They were good friends, and easy to confide in. She was beautiful, even for a vampire, and kind, but we were so different. We wouldn’t make each other happy. She’d been eager to keep me company when I arrived, biting for a reason about why exactly I left my coven. For a while, I welcomed her company. Under the shallow crush, she was a wonderful friend, going the extra mile to put a smile onto my face. She was a comfort in the madness of the first days after I ran.

The madness.

I scoffed internally.

I tried my damndest to rid myself of the haunting brown eyes that followed me and here I was, stuck in motion, after I’d run again. The Denalis had been hospitable, but they, too, were confused. I’d escaped to another part of the Alaskan backcountry, wanting to face my terrors in solidarity.

The stupid girl’s face was picture perfect in my mind, though her expressions were ones of curiosity and bewilderment. The vision of her brown hair taut against her fingers as she brushed it behind her ear was still vivid

I spent a lot of my nights face down in the snow, hardening my muscles in the battle to turn and look at the sky. I was still at odds with myself. I felt like I was changing, but I wasn’t sure if it was for the better or for the worse. Parts of me, mostly the demon raging underneath my stone-cold skin, begged me to race back to the small Washington town. It would be easy to find her house. And there were no others around to stop me, except the Podunk Chief of Police that slept a room over.

Chief’s Swan’s face flashed across my mind. He was a man of little thought every time I’d fallen into my human façade to interact with him. Had my choice saved him from some form of peril? Alice told me that first day that Bella was Chief’s Swan’s only family. The choice would affect more than just me, more than just my family. I’d also thought of the carefully constructed lifestyle my wondrous father created. A slip up came with the territory, but so did conscience. We’d have to attend the funerals of our victims; a retrospective stand in the corner and think about what you’ve done.

I wasn’t proud to admit I didn’t think I would have been able to do that. It was apparent I’d left the Edward who would bite the bullet back in the biology classroom when I’d gunned out of there like a lion in the midst of a hunt.

Weeks of being in the open air had given me time to think. I didn’t share it with any of my family--and they called frequently to check in. While a substantial shame weighed heavily on me, it’d gotten more serious—more than I’d like to admit— in the last few weeks, so I dodged their calls.

I wondered if Alice would see through my act. If anyone would, it would be my closest little sister. She said she missed me constantly, but ultimately came around to seeing things my way.

It was easier for me to be gone.

Which only meant she’d seen my escape from the last frontier.

The madness didn’t go away, it simply grew. 

Bella Swan’s ocean-deep eyes stalked me as though they were a night creature, as if I were the prey. Ironic. 

Her eyes were everywhere—in the sky, in the swaying of the trees as I hunted, in the blackness when I slammed my eyes shut. So, I gave into it. Her delicious scent was still fresh in my memory, the thought alone creating hellfire at the base of my throat.

Staring into the eyes made me inquisitive. I didn’t know much about her and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the real thing. I remembered things about her—her closed mind being the forefront. Had I simply just missed it, the plain buzzing of her mind? Was my gift fading? Eleazar shook his head on that, similar in opinion to Carlisle. Gifts didn’t diminish over time, only grew. It had to be on her end. Was it something as simple as an operational error? Perhaps, her human brain worked on an AM frequency while mine worked only on FM. It was a nuisance to me, the mystery of the missing sound. 

It nagged me almost as much as the scent did. 

I also remembered the way the fluorescent light radiated off her, as if she glowed.. As if she’d spent time in the sun, yet her skin was creamy and rich.

I knew she went by Bella instead of her full given name. I wondered what her second name was.

I knew she was from the south, a desert city moving to a green alien land because of some custody arrangement. I wondered if her family life was hard.

In a way, I felt like I wanted to know her, dive deep into the depth of her coffee-bean colored eyes.

So I tried, while still keeping my distance.

I sighed to myself, sitting up. I’d been on the ground for hours. The sky began to swirl into the harsher lights of the morning. I only had a short while before the Alaskan sun was blazing overhead. I needed to head back, to get cover, to trap myself inside the small hotel room I’d rented myself on the north end of the nearest town. I pulled myself to my feet effortlessly, using a pale hand to dust myself off. I whipped my head around to make sure I was in the clear before darting back towards the motel.

My phone vibrated in my pocket for the fourth time this evening. I supposed I should have answered it. They’d known better to call multiple times for something that wasn’t important. 

It rang again as I fished the frail keys from the pocket of my jeans and opened the door.

I sat on the old bed, the whining of the coils from my weight sounding in my ears.

It was the sixth time that I answered. I knew the caller before I gently flipped the lid of the phone open and pressed it to my ear.

“Alice,” I muttered quietly.

“Finally,” she said back, her silvery voice rich with annoyance.

“Sorry…I was busy,” I replied, knowing very well she’d been following my every move this evening.

She ignored my excuse, launching into conversation.

“You can come home.”

A million different paths scrambled together in my head at her words.

What of the Swan girl? Had she decided to go back to Arizona?

Where had she gone?

Was it something worse? 

I could come back because of the tragedy. The sweet blush I pictured so frequently in my head would remain pale; the ocean-deep brown eyes could never stare soulfully into anything again.

“What do you mean I can come home? The school year is hardly out for the summer.”

“You can come home Edward; Bella isn’t in danger anymore.”

“Isn’t in danger anymore? Of course, she is—” 

“You don’t have to worry about her blood anymore. It’s gone. It can no longer tempt you.” The twists and turns of words continued to escape my sisters’ mouth, a conundrum spinning in my head.

“Alice!” I snapped while shaking my head in confusion. “Make sense. Quit with the riddles, please.”

Perhaps she’d been lost in her head, plucking out certain futures she was certain on. What was coming? What had changed? The plastic of the phone squeaked gently in my hand.

“The girl is gone.” Alice spoke quickly, pausing. It wasn’t often my sister stopped to take a breath. 

“She’s been changed..” 

“How could that have happened, Alice? I thought you were watching! Which one of you did it? The treaty—”

“It wasn’t one of us!” She bit back, “There were others in the area last week. I suppose the girl was a magnet for trouble after all. The treaty is still intact.”

“They hunted her?”

Had my efforts been wasted? Had I nearly risked exposure for nothing? To save her to become some passerby’s meal. Why hadn’t I just given in to the monster if this was her fate?

I quavered, rattling away the grieving thoughts of the monster inside, waiting for Alice’s next words.

“I don’t think he meant to do it. We believe he meant to drain her…finish her. There was a distraction…When the nomad returned, her change had been nearly complete.”  
I scoffed—a huff of disbelief. This was as close to my mind reeling as I could get.  
Well. No. I supposed the day I met the girl, the insignificant human whose face had haunted me every moment, tormenting me as she kept me from my family, my mind had more than reeled. Even now, a deep shame coursed through me. I’d been unhinged. Undone. A nightmare barely reined in by the slightest modicum of control.  
Now she was the nightmare. A bloodthirsty, nearly mindless newborn, and without Carlisle’s influence...  
“It bothers you,” I said to distract myself from the myriad of thoughts assailing me.  
“You can’t imagine how many of her futures I saw. She was deciding who she wanted to be when she grew up.” Alice sounded wistful. “I was invested, I suppose. She was going to be so interesting.”  
Irked—and oddly sad— I found I had many questions. But they could wait. Done could not be undone, and Alice was right; her blood posed no problem now. “I’m coming home.”  
And I could be nothing but glad at that, even if Isabella Swan had paid the worst price despite my efforts.  
I cradled the phone between my cheek and shoulder as I stood. I moved with my true speed around the dull little room, collecting my things into the dark green duffle bag at the foot of my bed.

“Where is she now? Did one of you intercede, we can’t just let a newborn…” I trailed off as I moved.

“Edward, that’s the other thing…she’s gone. The nomads waited around for her. They took her with them. I can keep track of her, sure, but it’s getting harder. I’m not sure where she is.” She explained. If Alice had been human, she’d be biting her lip on the other end of the line.

“I’ll be there soon.”

“I’m glad. I missed you. Cover up, there will be some sun on your drive.”

“I missed you too, Alice.”

I shut the phone and looked down at the nearly full bag. I didn’t see the floor of the hotel. Instead, I saw possible futures churning in my head like a tornado. 

Bella was turned.

Bella was a vampire.

She was out of Forks.

Gone.

Nomads? Who left someone to change while they ran across in the woods? The thought didn’t settle right with me, and I was eager to hit the road to pick the vision out of my sister’s head. Had her blood sung to them the way it had to me that day in biology?

La Tua Cantante, as Eleazar had adopted the Volturi coven’s term for blood that appealed strongly to us, to the monster within. He growled internally, a crying call lamenting the pure waste at my decision. 

I cursed under my breath as I pulled on a dark hoodie over my long-sleeved t-shirt. I pulled the hood up, tightening it as a precaution. The windows of Carlisle’s Mercedes were tinted dark, but I couldn’t take a risk, especially with what appeared to be ravenous nomads around our territory.

I finished packing, nearly breaking the door off the hinges when I left. 

I looked up once more, at the whirl of colors in the sky, a glowing orange, a soft blue, an artist’s palette ready to splatter it with endless light.

And in the orange, the Swan girl’s once brilliant eyes followed me home.

**_~Bella~_ **

There had to be thousands of depictions of the Moirai—The Fates, the goddesses that dictated destiny. I preferred them as crones—ancient women with twisted features and wide, ghoulish grins. Clotho, the spinner, bringing new life into the world, the thread of life begun. Lachesis the drawer of lots, deciding the length of the thread. Atropos, the inexorable, drawing the thread taut.

And no matter how Atropos was depicted, in her hands there was always me. Her shears. Her tool. Her reckoning.

Death.

The wind shifted, Atropos whispering in my ear, and three threads tensed. I cut off mid-sentence, mid-word, already lost to the hunt. My muscles coiled and I used the rockface, ricocheting off it like a bullet as I ran, the perfect predator intent on my helpless prey.

Oh, humans. Nature’s anomaly, believing they were at the top of the food chain, believing the world belonged to them. It was strange, really. Their skin was paper-thin and soft. They’d developed no armor, not like the porcupine and it’s needles. They’d developed no defense mechanism, like a field mouse’s ability to burrow quickly to escape the razor-sharp talons of the eagle. They didn’t run fast. Their sense of smell told them nothing more than if their food was burnt. Their ears heard nothing more than their inane ramblings.

And then, nature’s answer: Me. Us. Vampires. Lethal. Unescapable. 

I burst into the clearing, appearing, I knew, as though out of nowhere. There were three humans, campers, setting up a tent by the river. The one nearest to me didn’t get to look up before I’d lifted him and sent him sailing into the thick trunk of a tree headfirst. Without a second glance, I darted at the other two. Venom pooled, and I struck. I held one human aloft with one hand while I brought the second human closer, crushing him against my body. He had time to utter just one sound. A name.

“Bethany,” he cried, one hand outstretched toward the woman.

And then my teeth sunk into lush skin. Bethany shrieked, and I moaned. 

Blood. Was there any pleasure greater?

It took minutes to drain the first human dry, all while the second screamed and thrashed and begged. I paid her no mind. Not until I let the first body, drained and lifeless, fall into a heap at my feet. 

And now, Bethany.

I’d dropped her at the end there, using both my hands to turn her companion upside down. His blood had a sweet note to it I enjoyed, and I wasn’t willing to waste a drop. Easy enough to catch little Bethany even if she turned out to be an Olympic runner.

Oh, Bethany. Atropos choose her weapon too well.

The woman was only ordinary by human standards, but even the most extraordinary human was no match for me. She’d dragged herself, her limbs shaking too hard to carry her upright, only a few feet away. I grabbed her by the ankle, held her aloft, and sunk my teeth into her femoral artery.

Not nearly as sweet, but I wasn’t picky. It took only seconds for her screams to become whimpers. Only a few more before the little clearing was silent save for the river and the heartbeat of the one human left alive.

I tilted my head, momentarily sidetracked. I was filled to the brim with fresh blood--kind of sloshy even. Yet there was this last human. Where I was standing, his scent wafted helpfully away from me. Sated, the bloodlust had receded, and my limitless mind had returned to me full force, a hundred thoughts zinging around my head at once.

Easily taken care of even if I didn’t want to drain him. In height and width, the man was bigger than I was, but what did that matter? I could squash him like a spider; crack his neck. I could do it with my little toe. 

But then, with a few exceptions, I’d let spiders be in my first life. I didn’t mind sharing space with something so insignificant. 

What was this human to me? His bite wouldn’t even itch the way a spider’s had in my human life. And it would be such a waste to kill him with his blood still trapped in his body where it would rapidly cook and become unappetizing.

He was groaning now, shaking off his stupor, and I knew I had to make a decision. If I was going to leave him alive, better to grab the bodies of his two friends and run. It would be a convenient enough cover story. His friends knocked him out for reasons only they could know and ran off together, never to be seen again. 

Even as I debated, the rest of my senses were active. I breathed in and out, tasting the air, separating the smells of the forest, the rocks, the humans. My eyes scanned the trees in the distance and the dust motes in the air between at the same time. And my ears…

My ears detected much. The breeze and the birds that flew on it. The water and the deer that lapped from it maybe two miles upstream. A mountain lion slinking along a mile away, probably headed for the deer.

And the almost silent passage of something quicker even than the mountain lion and thousand times stronger.

I sunk into a crouch, a hiss on my lips. Like the frenzy, the instinct to protect—myself and my property overrode thought entirely. It was such a base thing; natural and automatic. Rage ballooned in me at the very idea of the threat.

“Calm down.”

He spoke from a good enough distance away that I heard him well before I could launch an attack. It took some effort to shake off the defensiveness. He hated it when I snarled at him. The last time I had, he’d backhanded me right into a tree. 

I straightened up, watching as my sire sauntered into the clearing, a smirk playing at his lips. He surveyed the scene, his eyes flirting from the two drained humans at my feet and the one closer to him. He chuckled. “It was rude of you to run off in the middle of our conversation, but seeing as you saved me a snack, I’m inclined to forgive you, pet.”

Some part of me protested—the kill was mine—but I managed to keep my irrational warning growl trapped in my throat as he stepped to the moaning human. I watched as he stopped and picked the man up, pressing him against a tree to taunt him into wakefulness.

He liked them to be alert when he bit, preferably looking him in the eyes right before he struck. The adrenaline left such a nice flavor on the tongue.

Oh, well. I shook off the last trace of fury. It did solve the problem nicely. My sire was pleased and not a drop of blood would go to waste.  
________________________________________  
**A/N: You can blame Midnight Sun for this!**

**Again, this was written by myself and Mariescullen, or mariesmccall. It’s is going to be a fun ride, but have some patience with us. We promise not to take twelve years like SM. ;)  
**


	2. Chapter 2

**~Bella~**

“Come down here, young one. It’s unbecoming for an immortal to pout so.”

The voice floated up to me on the wind, originating from far below. I peered down, but even with my limitless vision, I couldn’t see through the cloudbank. I was tucked into a ledge. Well, ledge was giving the rock too much credit. It was nothing more than a crevice. 

“I know you can hear me,” Laurent said, his tone a sing-song. As though he was trying to coax out a hiding child. It was how he saw me, I knew. Just a child in more ways than one. 

I peered over the edge again, straining to see him, but there was no disruption in the clouds. How could he have seen me? Or have known his voice would carry up to me? How was he so sure I could hear him?

I made a disgruntled noise, trying to calm my irritation. This was exactly why I grated on my sire’s nerves. The questions. I had so many questions. Without the need to breathe, and with the ability to move my lips at subsonic speeds, I could ask questions almost as soon as they occurred to me. My mind was limitless, my wits acute and quick. To say I had millions of questions was an understatement.

“Shut. Up,” my sire had snarled at me some hours before. “I can’t stand the sight of you right now. Get out of my face before I put the both of us out of our misery.”

He had gone in one direction and I had scaled the highest cliff I could find in the other.

To sulk.

“Bella,” Laurent sang.

I rolled my eyes but relented. I loosened the tension in my feet and back, instantly sliding down the sheer rockface. The wind whistled by my ears and, in spite of myself, I grinned. It was a simple thing to catch a ledge here and there, some of them barely more than an inch of rock. I bounced nimbly—on my foot, and then on one toe—just because I could. I had to slow my fall, after all. Just enough. Not that it would have hurt me to leave a Bella-shaped crater when I landed. But a hole that size actually could get on the human’s radar. 

Off the radar. It was the only rule my sire had drilled into my head. 

“You’re not going to bring the Volturi down on my head,” he’d said.

When I broke through the clouds, I could finally see Laurent below. He leaned against a rock on the bank of the rushing river, arms crossed in a casual stance. I kicked off the rock and arced into the air, grabbing the first branch sturdy enough to hold me. Keeping hold of it, I circled once, using the momentum to flip into the air again. I fell at a more controlled rate and landed in front of him with only the smallest crunch of gravel beneath my feet.

He pursed his lips and clapped like a parent when their toddler expected it. My temper flared. I started to sink into a crouch.

“Easy,” Laurent soothed, a hand on my shoulder. “I was teasing.” He chuckled. “It’s been quite some time since I was around a newborn. Irrational, vicious creatures you are, even at nearly two months old.” He chucked me under my chin to let me know he was still teasing. 

He let me go and took a step back, looking me over. “I remember, of course, what it was like to be new. Everything is more intense; all emotion. Everything you think and feel comes in extremes.” He smirked. “People like James, who has no patience whatsoever, have no business having children.”

My teeth closed with an audible clack. “I’m not a child.”

“Of course not.”

I growled, but rolled my eyes. Not only was I a newborn vampire, but I was frozen at seventeen, and he was forever forty. I supposed I could understand why he thought of me as a child.

Again, Laurent chuckled. “Don’t take it personally, Bella. It’s as I said. Being human could never have prepared you for this life; for your new mind, your new body. The strength. The quickness of your thoughts.. Your new instincts. It’s a lot to get used to. And you were a human teenager to begin with. Teenagers are… Well, teenagers. Your emotions ruled you even then.”

I huffed. I couldn’t remember being so out of control as a human. Thinking about my human life was...annoying. How had I never realized how fuzzy my sight was? How dull my senses? Regardless, I’d been a calm teenage girl. “Victoria isn’t that much older than I am,” I muttered under my breath. And yet, my sire didn’t get tired of her. What was the big difference between seventeen and eighteen?

Laurent straight up chortled then, his head thrown back. I growled, and the sound cut off instantly. “Ah, Victoria. I’m surprised you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re such a clever girl. James’ impatience has much to do with Victoria. The melodrama. This is precisely what comes of taking a perpetual teenager as a mate.” He tilted his head, studying me. “And if she hadn’t been so petulant…”

My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

Laurent waved a hand. “Victoria was irritated that James was so amused by you. Such a brave little thing when you were human, when he was hunting you.”

I grimaced. The sheer terror of the monster that had stalked me—a defenseless, utterly breakable human back then—was among my sharpest memories from before. I understood my sire a lot better now. Humans were a meal. I gave no more thought to them than I had any meal I’d consumed in either of my lives. And I smelled so sweet, he’d told me. So, so delicious. Of course I’d caught his attention. 

Goodness knew any human that crossed my path owned me still. The call of their blood was impossible to ignore, and why would I want to?

“I didn’t know James when he found Victoria, of course,” Laurent mused. “But from what he’s told me, it was much the same with her. He hunted Victoria, and she too stood out from his many victims. She amused him, intrigued him, and he changed her so he could have her. But with you….” He shook his head. “I believe he would have finished you if she hadn’t distracted him, if she hadn’t begun playing one of their silly games. And maybe she could have kept him away, but the smell of your blood, Bella.” He inhaled and shuddered, his eyes fluttering closed as in memory. “The smell of it was so luscious. So mouthwatering. I smelled it on him. If you weren’t already one of us, I’d have hunted you myself for a taste. Of course he went back to finish you.”

He spread his hand wide. “So, you see? Victoria can be quite a foolish little girl too. More foolish for all of time than you will be, I think.” He eyed me and smiled a charming smile. “And I’m sure I can trust in your confidence on that matter. It’s just a simple observation.”

I scoffed, considering all the information he’d given me. “You don’t have to worry,” I said absently. “It’s not like Victoria and I are going to be having any heart-to-heart conversations any time soon.” What I felt for Victoria vacillated between anger and fear. She didn’t like me and made no secret about it. She was also dangerous.

Yeah. Well, so was I. I could feel the raw power I possessed. To hell with her gift of evasion. I could rip her apart if she threatened me.

But I ran over Laurent’s words again. Did she see me as a threat, not to her body but to her bond with my sire? I was revolted at the thought. James was… he wasn’t that. Not to me.

Was I that to him?

A fuzzy memory occurred to me. My sire, toying with me. The games he played because adrenaline and fear changed the flavor of his meal. He’d pressed me against the wall, not hurting me, not that time. He’d run his nose down my neck, and his hands…

But it was all about the fear. He liked to play with his food, and that was all I had been to him at that moment. He was amusing himself. He didn’t want me. Not like Victoria. Not like his mate. I was sure of it.

And it definitely wasn’t that way for me.

“But Victoria is his mate. I thought that had meaning. If she thought it was even possible he was looking at me in that way…” I shook my head hard because it was just so ridiculous. “Does that mean the bond isn’t as strong as I thought? Or can you have more than one mate? I guess I’m still thinking in human terms, aren’t I? Does he—”

Laurent again burst out laughing. He put a hand on my shoulder, leading me forward. “Come, young one. I’ll see how many of your questions I can answer.”  
~0~  
We were in Montana now, I thought. My sire was keeping us away from populated areas for obvious reasons—I couldn’t be trusted to control myself—but it wasn’t so difficult to find campers or rock climbers to slake our thirst. Victoria griped constantly. They couldn’t play the games they liked to play with the limitations I imposed on them. 

Laurent had told me the newborn madness didn’t last long—barely the blink of an eye to an immortal. Still, I didn’t like the idea I was a burden, and I’d been working hard to control myself sooner than later. There had to be a way.

When I smelled human, it was pure instinct that drove me. It was as ingrained and necessary as taking a breath had been to me as a human. I breathed in the scent, and my body knew what to do without my having to tell it anything. There was nothing in my head but the wordless chant of blood, blood, blood, blood, BLOOD. Now. And the frenzy of it didn’t fade until I’d satisfied the snarling monster inside. 

But, when I thought about it, it wasn’t true that I lost all sense of rationality when the bloodlust kicked in. Most of it, sure, but not all. I’d reveled at the limitless capability of my new, sharp mind. I was still in there even when instinct took over. There was still part of me taking in everything else, thinking, processing. I just had to grab hold of it and keep that hold; make it bigger than the madness.

We came upon a group of humans fishing along the river, far from the main trails. I drained one, two, feeling their useless scratches and kicks against my marble skin, and then I slid into a crouch, teeth bared, instinct telling me to defend the rest. They were mine.

But there was that one shred of mindfulness. 

I’d been hunting with the rest. Laurent drank one of the humans now, his eyes on me so he could bound away if I decided to strike. Victoria and my sire were toying with another human. A simple game. They let the man believe he had a chance, jumping in front of him to send him running in one direction only to have the other land a scant inch from his face. They were going to exhaust him—keep him running in useless circles until he collapsed. 

Instinct had every muscle in me tensed, ready to spring. I could smell him, of course. I could hear his heart hammering. My mind knew I was sated yet still, my body responded to the call of his blood. 

It wanted to, anyway, but I was determined not to let it. I was sated, I reminded myself yet again. Let the others have their fun without interference from my out-of-control, newborn nature.

I started to step back. As I did, I caught Victoria’s eyes over the head of the human. Her features twisted into a vicious sneer. But then, she smirked.

And reached out, running one nail along the human’s skin.

Exposed blood. 

The frenzy bubbled and seared my thoughts stark white. No—red. I sprang towards them.

But that one shred of rational thought reached for me. Wait. Wait. Wait!

I landed, off balance, and rolled my weight to the heels of my feet. I bared my teeth, hissing, and then gritted them. I fought an internal battle with the vicious, unthinking beast. No sooner than I had regained my balance—a fraction of a second—than I bounded again. Up this time. High up. I grabbed a tree branch and swung. Higher. Then onto the next tree. Another. And finally up onto a rock ledge. I stood there, braced against the rock, breathing in huge gulps of clean mountain air and dirt until my nose was clear of the scent. The frenzy faded. 

Still, the memory was sharp. The vicious animal in my head knew how to connect the dots. That scent was no trouble to imagine with my perfect recall. And I could hear the human still; hear the sound of the game. The monster knew prey was near.

I shook my head hard and turned, pressing my back against the rock, digging my fingers into the stone. My mind grappled for something distracting enough. My newborn nature was good at that—getting distracted. Everything came in extremes.

My mind spun, reeling from topic to topic until one observation stopped me in my tracks.

The man, the human, looked like Charlie from this distance. The hat. The jacket. The hair—just my shade of brown. A fisherman. 

And just like that, I was thinking of my human father. 

It was a strange dichotomy to think about: the difference between my two lives. Did I still belong to my human father? His blood still ran inside me—very literally at this point though my new body would run through it all eventually. His genetics still dictated my features. And as for nurture…

I tilted my head, my eyes going from the faltering human to the dead one in Laurent’s arms. He was done now, lowering the woman gently to the ground as though she were asleep. My eyes swept to my own kills, discarded carelessly for the moment. I tried to imagine my father being called to a scene like this, knowing the horror he would feel.

The horror I would have felt if I was still human.

But I wasn’t. 

No human could have as much raw strength in their entire body as I had in a single finger. I could crack a rock with a single flex of my hand. The human I’d been could never find her sense of balance. I was graceful. I could take a nosedive off a mountain and land at the bottom on pointe. My old mind had been so dull, I’d struggled to pass high school math. Rocket science would be no stretch for my new mind to comprehend. 

And there was the shift in perspective. As a human, I balked at the loss of human life. Yet here I sat, watching my sire and Victoria toy with this man who could so easily have been my father. I felt nothing. A vague sense of the pointlessness of it—why bother with a game you were guaranteed to win anyway? But it was like watching a cat toy with a mouse. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It just was. 

As a human, time and life were precious. A human lifetime was so short. And that was the crux. Even as a new immortal, I could feel my own permanence. Just as it had been nothing for me, as a human, to squash a bug, I no longer felt the importance of such a limited existence. What was the longest human life—a hundred years even—in the timeline of someone who would live until this planet crashed into the sun?

I was infinite. 

I was not my father’s daughter. I was my sire’s creation. 

The human’s strength failed. He fell. His heartbeat faltered. Even if neither of them struck, he was done for now. So fragile. 

I watched my sire pick the human up and duck his head to the man’s neck, heard the lush sound of teeth sinking into flesh. 

The man could have been my father. Charlie liked to find far off, quiet places to fish. 

With or without running into a thirsty vampire, my father’s life would be over in the blink of an eye. My father. The man who had held me and loved me. There were eight billion humans on the planet. He and my mother had been the brightest stars in my universe. 

Like everything else, my human memories and emotions were small. Out of focus and vague. My every emotion as a newborn vampire existed in extremes. Everything as a vampire—my endless thirst more than anything—felt more important than the brightest memory of human emotion.

But my father...

He was a lonely man with nothing, no one. He’d never gotten over my mother. I was the most important thing in his world. His only star. His only source of light.

I was lost to him forever, but he didn’t know it yet. I was only missing. He’d come home to an empty house one day. No sign of struggle—how could he know I’d been wandering in the woods behind our house? It wasn’t something I usually did. There couldn’t have been much blood even if he’d found the scene of my death. My sire had been careful not to spill my blood when he’d been toying with me, trying to force me to show my fear. 

Charlie would never stop looking for me and that…

It made me sad. 

And in that moment, a thought was born. Just one of the millions zinging around my skull. It was an errant thought but one that wasn’t easily dismissed.

What if I could comfort him somehow? What if I could, at least, bring him some closure? 

In my previous life, I had, on occasion, saved the life of a snail that would otherwise have been trampled, moving it off the walkway. I’d had my moments of kindness toward creatures I had no feelings for. 

An act of kindness for the man who’d given me life, who I’d loved once, and who still loved me.

Silly maybe. 

But was it possible?

**~Edward~**

Students chatted amongst themselves, preparing for upcoming final exams and discussing who had asked whom to the senior prom. Forks High school was closing up shop for the 2005 school year; summer was around the corner. I picked at the food on my tray, still catching a glimpse of myself in a lone student’s thoughts. The class had experienced quite the shake up this year with the initial turmoil caused by Isabella Swan’s arrival, my disappearance, her disappearance, and then my sudden reappearance. This was enough to keep a town this small going for months. They waited like dogs at the door for her to come strolling back through the cafeteria doors. It was a pity really, she hadn't even gotten to experience the Forks summer. Not as a human, anyway.

I remembered the first days after I’d returned from Alaska.

_I was back in purgatory._

_The musings of my fellow classmates chattered on, reminding me of the little peace I’d had in the Alaskan wilderness. Many of the students were still rambling on about my sudden reappearance into the dull halls, while some lingered on the tragedy of the missing girl, Isabella. This was at the back of their minds, though. In center stage were questions about where I’d been._

_Boarding school in Switzerland?_

_Running away with an ex-girlfriend?_

_Prison?_

_I scowled in Mike Newton’s direction._

_Prison...perhaps. Maybe I should tell them where I’d actually been. I could see it in my head, Mike Newtons’s stupid face paling even further when I shared with him the fact that I nearly slaughtered the entirety of the Bio II lab that cold, January afternoon. He’d turn green when I told him of how I’d break his neck in an instant. That would make sense for a prison sentence, I suppose._

_“Everyone adjusting, Ed?” Emmett asked aloud for the sake of the table. He hated hidden conversations. He must have seen the vexation on my face._

_I didn’t respond as I tore a chunk out of my apple with my fingers in frustration. I had a lot on my mind since coming back to Forks only days ago. The future wasn't clear. The past few days had been as if Alice was slipping through a television with broken antennas. The girl was hard to follow, her newborn penchants making her indecisive._

_Anything on the girl? Jasper thought, staring worriedly at Alice. I shook my head subtly._

_There’s gotta be something...anything...Alice continued on, her fingers squeezing around an old cafeteria spoon._

And nothing was all there ever was. For months. It was like Isabella Swan had actually vanished. And Alice always kept her search going, lingering in the back of her mind. 

“I think we should go to the prom this year,” Rosalie said, smirking. A vision of my sister in a red dress flashed into my head, a gaggle of senior girls scoffing at her in jealous distaste. 

“Yes—” Alice started to agree before freezing. 

A cacophony of colors swirled before my eyes, the red from Rosalie’s dress growing, melting. 

The scene was red. 

“Oh...God!” Alice cried, shooting up from her seat. She ignored the looks of curious bystanders and the yelp of a frightened Ben Cheney who chose that moment to pass our table. 

The scene unfolded before my eyes, replaying itself. Bodies hitting the ground, the dulling embers of a campfire.

“That's...a lot of blood.” I whispered, looking into my sister’s horror filled eyes.


End file.
